


nodus tollens

by constellatory



Category: Persona 4
Genre: Internalized Homophobia, M/M, One-Sided Attraction, Second Person Perspective, Slow Burn, blame my buddy for that tag, longing and loneliness and loss oh my, souyolmates, this is not fluff, very slight alternate universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-23
Updated: 2016-10-17
Packaged: 2018-07-26 03:25:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 18,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7558300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/constellatory/pseuds/constellatory
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You barely know him. You met him all of three days ago. Yosuke Hanamura is a stranger, and he is your soulmate, and you have no idea what to do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. (realization)

_**nodus tollens** \- n. the realization that the plot of your life doesn't make  
sense to you anymore _

It starts the day you grasp his hand.

Not the day you fish him out of the trash can. It turns out it’s not _just_ touching someone, period. Not that you’d know; all you ever knew about the realization was what you’d seen in movies and read about in books, and you knew more about the latter than the former. You’ve never been much for pop culture, and you mostly read nonfiction. You’ve always had kind of a half-formed idea of it, something hazy and built out of golds and reds and an idea of blushing warmth. It would all happen in a rush: him, reaching out to touch her face, and realizing in an instant that they were destiny-bound. Her, already in love, hoping beyond hope that the realization had come to pass, and tears rushing down her face in joyous acceptance once he declared they were fated to be one.

Something like that, anyway. It was always easy in the stories, always beautiful.

Well, sometimes it was painful. Something would come between the lovers, or keep them apart, but they’d always be together in the end, wouldn’t they? By the end of the episode, or the end of the last chapter, or before the end credits, because that was just how stories had to work. It wasn’t something you paid much attention to. You didn’t have much time for that kind of thing, nor all that much interest, if you were honest with yourself. You thought it might be kind of nice, as a maybe, someday, if-it-were-to-ever-happen kind of thing. But everyone knew that the _actual_ realization was vanishingly rare. A lot of people didn’t really believe in it. After all, with seven billion people in the world, how many people actually found their honest-to-God soulmate?

As limited as your exposure has been in your life to the kinds of books and movies et. al. that would have these kinds of stories up until now, you’re pretty sure you’ve seen examples where a brush of a sleeve or a touch against the small of someone’s clothed back has been enough for the realization to happen. You find out for yourself that’s a gross exaggeration of the power. Clothing dulls the touch, does something to interrupt the connection. It has to be a moment, longer than the space of a breath, of skin-to-skin contact, or it just won’t work. You’re not sure why. Considering there’s no logical reason for it to work at all, that it’s crazy and silly and strange and it’s tantamount to something like pure, insane magic, why even bother trying to explain it or having particular rules?

No; you find out that the realization is real the moment you extend your hand to him at what’s surely the most difficult and vulnerable moment of his life: just after he’s accepted his Shadow in a dark, warped version of Konishi Liquors, and been forced to come to grips with the fact that the girl he liked, the girl who just died, hated him.

When his palm connects with yours and his fingers curl round to grip and take hold, it’s like life halts. If you’d ever spared it any serious consideration at all, which you hadn’t, you would have thought it would be more rose-colored, somehow. More shimmering. That your breath might hitch in your chest, or that the boy looking up at you with fear and with hope might suddenly seem more beautiful. Instead, it’s like your heart’s been dropped into ice, and the frigid water that’s replaced your blood chills your skin as it rushes anxiously through the rest of your body. Everything is frozen. You, him, this static-wracked stage, your perception of the world. It doesn’t feel romantic. It doesn’t feel as nice as a revelation of this magnitude and nature ought to feel.

Still, you know: Yosuke Hanamura is your soulmate. You know it like you know your own name. No, _more._ You know it more deeply than that. You know it like you know the fact of your own existence. You could forget your name, you could forget everything you’d ever been and done, and you’d still understand exactly where Yosuke is supposed to slot into your life.

You barely know him. You met him all of three days ago. He is a stranger, and he is your soulmate, and you have no idea what to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anyone who follows my tumblr will know that I've been working on this fic since February of this year. A very, very big thank you to everyone who has stuck by me and also helped me work over this fic again and again and again. I'm incredibly excited to share this project with all of you. This will be the first multi-chapter fic I've ever completed. I hope you guys like it.
> 
> All due credit to [this tumblr post](http://destinyofamerath.tumblr.com/post/139465986081) for inspiring me with this idea many months ago.
> 
> Expect a rate of roughly one chapter a week, more when the chapters are very short. Additional character tags will be added as chapters go up where those characters are included.
> 
> As always, please feel free to come say hi to me over on my [tumblr](http://thievishly.tumblr.com/), where I'll sometimes post expanded chapter notes if I feel like it. (If I do, I'll link to them, though.)


	2. (friendship)

What you end up doing is putting it out of your mind.

You have a particular talent for compartmentalization. It is, in a strange way, one of the gifts that seems to draw people to you, though you wouldn’t quite state it that way. It’s what helps you organize. Being organized keeps you timely and prompt. These characteristics are what give everyone around you the impression that you’re conscientious and polite, always thoughtful and aware of their needs. And you are, of course; you’re watching, always watching, because you are at your core a knower of people and their hearts. It’s not so much that they fascinate you, but that the tendrils of emotion people trail behind them like phantasmic streamers inevitably tangle you up, your empathy catching on their threads, and you get tugged along in the wake of their lives. Silently, for the most part; until you got to Inaba, they never seemed to see you there, but you’d always quietly watch them come and go. The trait that helps you _do_ all this watching is your ability to separate everything you observe into small, discrete pieces, and file it all away into neat drawers in your mind.

You’d go a little crazy if you weren’t so good at this particular kind of mental math.

And you have to do it with what you’ve learned about Yosuke, and yourself in relation to him. To know what you know now is too huge to deal with, especially so soon, when he's still little better than a stranger to you, darkest secrets of his soul having been bared notwithstanding. You don't _know_ him. Maybe if you’d already gone on some kind of grand adventure with him for two hours’ worth of screen time and only then touched his face right before a passionate embrace, it might somehow feel more appropriate. Maybe if the two of you were childhood friends and you had the realization when you were four, and been simply unable to comprehend it until you were a teenager and could begin to grasp what such complex and charged feelings meant. Maybe if you’d just known him _at all_ before a few weeks ago.

Right now, it just feels uncomfortable and strange and too terrifyingly fantastical and unreal to begin to deal with. Personas, murders, those you can handle more or less in stride because somehow, some way, you can exert some measure of _control_ over your role in the case, even if its facts are a mystery to you. You can tame your Personas, decode and reverse engineer their purpose and meaning and place in your head. This, this _thing_ with and about and because of Yosuke, this throws you, because it upsets everything you believed you knew about yourself and you can’t do anything to stop it. You put the word _soulmate_ into a small box in your mind and you lock it away, and for some time, you refuse to examine it again.

It’s futile to contain it completely, because you’re not a machine. It buzzes beneath your skin like impossible lightning, crackling across your nerve endings and making your hair stand on end whenever he gets too close to you, which is almost always. The knowledge moves with you like a newly gained sixth sense, a second shadow that nips at your heels with shark-sharp teeth through every lane of Inaba, down every school hallway, across every pathway in each new mental prison victims – Yukiko, and with her Chie, in rapid succession – create for themselves in the TV World. It’s there, always there, and there’s no helping the fact of it.

What you _can_ do is ignore it, and you do. You have to. If you didn’t, there’d be no way you could actually get to _know_ Yosuke without the knowledge, without the realization, coloring his every word, your every interaction with him, and you don’t want that. You want to know him on his own terms. You want to know Yosuke Hanamura, the person, not Yosuke Hanamura, your soulmate. If those two people are to be one and the same someday, that’s fine. But you want to give them the chance to be separate, first. You feel that’s the only way for things to be fair.

Yosuke Hanamura, the person, turns out to be your best friend. He’s got a grin like a wolf when he’s excited, where he peels his lips back and it splits his whole face open, and it’s so unabashed and openly emotional it kind of embarrasses you to look at sometimes. His laugh is the same way, as open as the rest of him, and he wears his heart so loosely on his sleeve you wonder sometimes if it won’t tumble free, right into your hands, where you’ll have to keep it safe. He’s brash and he’s quick, too quick, with his hands and his steps and his mouth; he twirls his kunai and almost stabs himself in the toes a hundred dozen times, and he does the same with his words, speaking before he ever thinks. Sometimes he makes the kinds of jokes and comments that turn you still as stone, your stomach churning with the anxiety your face won't show, and it's like his nervous mouth runs even faster to compensate for your silence, as if that will make things better instead of worse.

Which is not to say that you don't play along, many times; you do. Your senses of humor are actually pretty similar, if very different in execution. Rolling along with or even raising the stakes on his dumb jokes with completely deadpan commentary is usually one of the highlights of your day. You try not to notice the way delighted little smiles sweep over his whole expression when you back him up, and you try not to laugh at the way he groans when he finds your jokes lame instead, and you inevitably fail at both those things. But sometimes he takes it too far, elevating teasing into painful if unintended barbs, and you can see it on Chie and Yukiko’s faces, too, the way his words affect them. He only sometimes notices.

To be fair, when he does, he always apologizes.

For all that he’s one of the most thoughtless people you’ve ever met, to the point of driving you to distraction, he’s also one of the most caring and singularly hard working. He covers it all with a veneer of laziness and complaints, but when it comes to Junes, or the case, or forays into the TV World, he’s the first to arrive and the last to leave. You watch him. You see it. No one else seems to notice it, because he’s so loud and utterly impassioned with his moaning and groaning that the sincerity of his true feeling seems to get drowned out. Maybe that’s what he wants. Maybe that’s what he doesn’t realize is what he wants. But if Yukiko is too tired to heal, Yosuke does it instead, covering his wince with a grin as wide as the sky, and you see it.

You see it because you watch him, and you watch him because you must. Only you stop watching him because you _must,_ and start watching him because you _want to._ And then you’re not watching him; you’re seeing him, experiencing him, being _with_ him.

Because that’s what best friends do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Properly introducing Yosuke. A billion thanks to my buddy Asher for helping me proof this chapter, and every single other chapter! You should check out [his stuff](http://archiveofourown.org/users/dashery/works) if you like the homestucks.
> 
> I've got a [tag](http://thievishly.tumblr.com/tagged/fic%3A-nodus-tollens) on my tumblr now for my dumb ramblings about this fic. See you all in a few days!


	3. (pause)

The first time he calls you partner, you accidentally skip a breath and start to cough. He pats you on the back, laughing even as he gives you a searching look from under a wrinkled brow. It happens sooner than you expect it to, and yet somehow it doesn’t feel soon enough, not when your own heart already knows. You wonder why he says it. You tell him you’re fine and that you swallowed some air by accident; he seems to accept the excuse and keeps chattering with all the easy, bright babbling of a stream. As you watch him talk, you try to convince yourself he doesn’t somehow know, or that you didn’t somehow let your secret knowledge slip, that he didn’t come up with that nickname in response. Why else would he start calling you a thing like that?

_ partner. _

The word nestles itself beneath your sternum, small and close and warm, a marble you roll around and polish with every movement of your lungs. It’s not uncomfortable. If you held it up to the light, it would probably gleam. That’s a maudlin thing to think, and you chastise yourself for it, a little. You find your thoughts more and more diverted by him as time passes. Though you try in many ways to settle your focus, you inevitably stray back to thoughts of Yosuke.

Most of the time, it’s not too hard to stay on task, to keep from pausing. You’re pretty good at that. You fill your schedule with busy things, many things, plenty of things. It’s something your parents always required of you, because even when you were little they set their expectations high, and out of a mix of deference, love, and a desire not to trouble them, you did your best to meet their standards. Clubs, and grades, and social expectations: these things you can juggle easily, and well. You do it so naturally it’s like breathing, a second skin you slip into, a sixth sense for how to handle the world around you. Wearing it is armor against the maelstrom of emotions constantly beating against your composure, the raging storm twisting your weathervane about until you’ve lost all sense of which way you’re meant to be facing. You’re not used to  _ feeling  _ this much.

Between all your afternoons at basketball practice and drama club, training with Chie and running errands for the fox, between days spent fighting your way through the TV world and learning what it is to make your voice ring with command, between trips to the library after school spent surreptitiously reading books about military strategy, about the Roman phalanx and Sun Tzu’s  _ The Art of War,  _ between folding envelopes and paper cranes and herding children at the daycare,

you roll the word  _ partner  _ around in your chest over and over and over like something precious and perfect even though it can’t stop biting your heart every time it gets too near. Every time it nips with teeth that feel like you imagine Yosuke’s would, you think of him, the warmth of him, the timbre of his voice and the way his laugh trips over itself as it tumbles out of his mouth, the way his arm feels slung around your shoulders, the shape of his eyes when he smiles at you,

and you pause anyway. You lose the thread of the task you’re working on.

It’s usually only for a moment. You never let yourself get distracted for too long. You’re a diligent person, and your ability to stay collected even in the most perilous of situations has become something your friends’ lives rely on.

But still, you pause.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the late update! I'm shooting for Tuesdays and Fridays, but it'll probably vary.
> 
> There will eventually be dialogue.


	4. (magic)

In your idle time, you like to look up and learn about simple magic tricks. Sleight of hand, rubber bands, tricks and small tics, a black pack of cards in one of your back pockets. It’s enough to make Nanako smile, and that would be plenty of reason to do it even if it hadn’t already been a hobby of yours before you arrived in Inaba.

Browsing videos on the Internet teaches you everything you need to know, and usually all you look up is precisely what you want to learn. Sometimes, though, your curiosity gets the better of you, and the things you wander onto are feats you couldn’t ever possibly achieve or hope to try.

That’s how you discover fire walking. Video after video of intrepid souls dancing lightly across long beds of burning coals, barefoot. It astounds you the first time you see it, but the trick to it, you find out, is actually pretty simple. The sweat produced by their feet creates a protective barrier of vapor that keeps them from getting burned as long as they move quickly enough.

You learn about the nail bed trick this way, too. Again, it’s less a trick and more about simple physics. Magicians and martial artists lay their bodies down on beds of long, sharp nails, and sometimes the trick stops there. Sometimes, it continues: you watch assistants place a cinder block on their bellies, and then those same assistants smash the cinder block into dust with a mallet. The person beneath is unharmed, the skin of their back unbroken, not so much as scratched.

This, you learn when you look it up, is because of the distribution of pressure: with their bodies spread across many nails, no one nail can puncture them. If they tried to lay on one nail, of course it would go right through them. Even lying down on the bed must be done carefully, for if it’s done wrong, too much pressure will be applied and the magician will be impaled.

You spend hours one day watching fire walkers and nail bed tricks, over and over, long past the point of either trick being interesting to the normal person. At first, you have a hard time explaining your fascination to yourself. Why should you care about tricks you can’t do performed by people you don’t know, which aren’t really tricks at all?

You realize the answer when your phone buzzes with a text, and you see the name on the screen, and your stomach swoops in a sweet-sick-dizzy way, making your perspective shift and click into place.

Understanding dawns: idle too long on the bed of coals and you’ll burn. Keep moving, keep walking, or you’ll sear off your skin. Tread lightly,  _ don’t look back,  _ don’t stay still, go quick. Go quick.

Understanding dawns: lay carefully on that bed. Apply pressure wrongly, move foolishly, and you’ll impale yourself. Perform the trick incorrectly, too quickly, hastily, and you’ll bleed out for all the audience to see.

You stare at his name, and understanding dawns: the root of all magic is never to let the audience know your secrets. Never let them see how it is you keep your act together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was not the chapter for dialogue. There's a tiny smidgen next chapter. We're about done with setup, now. Things get a little bit worse from here on out.
> 
> Tell me the protag isn't the kind of nerd who'd spend hours on the internet looking for magic tricks to do to make Nanako smile and I will most definitely call you a liar.
> 
> Expanded chapter notes are now [here](http://thievishly.tumblr.com/post/148659557639/nodus-tollens-and-other-fic-ramblingsmore).


	5. (normalcy)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gentle warning for some internalized homophobia.

Eventually, you come to realize you’ve fallen in love with him after all. As if knowing he was your soulmate wasn’t enough. You suppose this was inevitable; could you really have lived near and spent so much time with your destined soulmate and not come to feel this way? Even so, it doesn’t help very much. Your eyes drift to him more than they should. Sometimes, when he touches you, you touch him back, small, barely-there gestures he doesn’t seem to register. No one but you seems to notice your preoccupation, which is the way you prefer it.

You don’t think you can tell him.

You don’t know how you can live without telling him.

He is very decidedly not into guys.

In all the stories, the one who has the realization goes to the ends of the Earth to convince their destined partner – _partner,_ the word thrums within you like the plucked string of a cello, all depth and sympathetic resonance – of what they know to be the truth. You’re fairly certain that if you leave it alone, forever, someday Yosuke will meet a nice girl who will see him for the amazing person he is, and settle down, and get married, and have a child, and be none the wiser that you were here, right here, within arm’s reach. It would probably be for the best, that way.

You have this thought as you are scrambling your way through Kanji’s dungeon, and everyone’s sweating and grumbling and feeling vaguely freaked out, but no one more than Yosuke.

_ this is so wrong in so many ways,  _ he said.

Yet he’s still Yosuke, you note almost helplessly, still attentive and caring and tactical, still worried about Kanji’s wellbeing even when he’s making a performance out of how uncomfortable he is.

_ but you’re a guy… _

_ you don’t act like a guy… _

When you save Kanji  – or rather, when you watch Kanji save himself with a punch to the face  – you can’t help but reflect on what rescuing each of these people has meant to you. They look up to you for it, and haven’t made it any secret. Deep down, though, you know that they’re the ones worthy of admiration. They’re the ones facing their darkest demons and coming out stronger for it.

You didn’t face your Shadow to get your Persona. You didn’t expose your naked, brutal soul in front of strangers in order to mature into a power you would then deserve. You simply awoke to it, like magic. How unfair. How unearned. You don’t think you’re all that special.

You aren’t the lead vocals of this song, with all your friends playing the backup parts. Much as they call you senpai, leader, and sensei, much as they look to you for guidance, for balance, for their much-needed reality checks, you feel very strongly that even if you weren’t there, your friends would be just fine. Which isn’t to say you devalue yourself; you just believe that strongly in their strength. You don’t stand before them, or above them.

You move beneath them, the bassline to their vibrant melody, supporting and holding them up with your secure, solid notes. You are the roots. You are bedrock. You are warm. You are home.

You are alone. There is no one on whose shoulders  _ you  _ can rest.

There is no one there to give you your reality check.

There is no one there to get Kanji and Yosuke’s words out of your head when they echo in the dark of the night,

reminding you that you aren’t normal,

reminding you that you aren’t right,

reminding you that you will never be what it is that Yosuke wants.

It would probably be for the best.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been excited to get here, as this is when we dive back into the plot. Next chapter will have our first real exchange of dialogue.
> 
> Sorry I missed the update day on Friday. I've got to stop losing track of time. But on the other hand, it's my birthday! Happy birthday to me, here is some fic.


	6. (studies)

You make inviting him over to study a regular thing. He’s grateful for it, because his grades have never been the best – not that he needs to explain that to you, he says, in his self-deprecating way. You want to take his fingers and press them to your mouth, to remind him of all the ways in which he’s extraordinary.

Mostly, the two of you actually do manage to get studying done, with you at your desk and him sliding on and off your couch – like a cat, you think. A cat that can’t stay still, constantly shifting around and trying to find a comfortable position, settling and resettling in the warmest possible patch of sun. This is the only thing that’s cat-like about Yosuke; in most of his other mannerisms he’s probably most like a puppy, with a laugh that bubbles up like a puppy’s bark and a way of perking up that’s so reminiscent of a dog pricking its ears that sometimes you want to pet his hair back.

Or maybe that’s to do with something else. You tell yourself to stop thinking that way, and you fail.

A lot of your study time is spent watching him idly. He never seems to notice you doing it, or if he does, he doesn’t say anything about it, so you don’t stop. The sharpness of his clavicles peeking through the collars of his v-neck t-shirts takes your breath away every time you look at him. You want to touch them with your mouth. You wonder if they’d be as warm as his hands. You have to stop wondering about it, and you can’t stop wondering about it when he’s so close to you all the time.

The chatter that passes between the two of you is always amicable, always easy, because everything is easy, with Yosuke. You talk about your classes, your strange teachers, this and that particular homework problem, how to conjugate verbs in English ( _no, no, not like that, you use_ _` ing` _ _there; seriously?! man, how do you know this stuff?_ ), a particularly nasty Shadow that caught you all by surprise, your lives back in the city. His smiles make the afternoon sunlight dim, make your chest warmer, as if he steals the whole sun away and seals it up inside himself to share it only with you.

One day he asks you about who you’re dating, because you must be seeing _someone_ ; didn’t he hear about a thing with Ai Ebihara? That was, you tell him, a favor, and not a _thing._ He looks confused, but you assure him you weren’t dating.

 _why?_ he says, head puppy-dog cocked to one side. _don’t you want to be?_

Your heart gives a little leap, a little cry, a little _something,_ you don’t know how to put words to it. Everything you can come up with feels too cheesy or too poetic or both for the short, sharp pain that lodges in your ribcage just beneath the steady beating of your heart.

 _maybe,_ you murmur, very quiet, looking away and tapping your pencil idly on the book in front of you.

 _yeah?_ Yosuke’s smirking at you now, his eyes lighting up with that excited little gleam he gets when he’s onto something. He scoots over on the couch at the same moment as you lean towards him, and the gleam turns positively conspiratorial. Your faces come close, and he’s grinning, grinning, incisors and sharp canines and you cup a hand over your mouth, press in close towards his ear, and whisper,

_it’s a secret._

What’s not a secret is the weeks Yosuke spends nursing his quiet hurt over the fact that his own best friend and partner won’t tell him who he has a crush on.

You bear this stoically.

The study sessions grow a little less frequent.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For a long time the only note I had for this chapter was "the sharpness of his clavicles."
> 
> Sorry for the missed update! I won't be updating tomorrow to make up for the lack of Tuesday. I need a bit more time, as chapter 9 still isn't finished. Whoops. However, next update will be a double update because both chapters are pretty short. Expanded notes for this chapter are [here](http://thievishly.tumblr.com/post/148820725339/nodus-tollens-notes-for-chapter-6more-i).
> 
> By the way, thank you guys so much for the continued very kind comments on this fic. They make me so happy to read. You're all the best.


	7. (imagine)

One day he confides in you, nervous and freaked out, that he managed to brush his hand across Saki’s, once. He never had the realization. He seems kind of relieved about it, and also crushingly guilty for being relieved. It’s clear  _ she  _ never had the realization, not based on what she said about him back in the TV World; and if he never had the realization, then she must not have been his soulmate at all. His feelings for her were real, that much he still insists upon. And it’s common knowledge to everyone that people can still love each other even if they’re not soulmates. After all, there’s billions of people in the world. The chances that you’ll find your soulmate are next to none if you really think about it, right? Yosuke mutters, twisting his fingers in the cord of his headphones, that he’d at least kind of  _ wondered  _ about it. Doesn’t everyone? But the mental click never came, and though he’d been disappointed at the time, he realizes now it was probably for the best. 

_ can you imagine,  _ he says softly, with due gravitas,  _ what it’d be like if i  _ had  _ felt it? _

You look at him, feeling the liquid electricity that your blood has become thrum through your pulse points, in your wrists, in your temples, and you wonder which gods have blessed or cursed you.

_ yeah,  _ you say, for lack of any better words, and he seems to take your lack of anything else to add as understanding of his feelings.


	8. (bells)

_ Yosuke. _

_ Yosuke. _

_ Yosuke. _

His name is a hymn and you’re the only prayer book that has all the words. It was a tilt-shift to your entire world to realize that you were made, custom fit, just to echo him back. You’re a whole person, you’re you, and you could have, you know, lived a whole life without ever having met him. You come up with and just as quickly discard a dozen upon a dozen metaphors to try and describe how you feel about it, until you finally find one you think fits. It’s sort of cloying, and it embarrasses you to think about, but it’s musical and sweet, and you think that if you ever manage to tell Yosuke about any of this, you’ll tell him about the metaphor, too. You already know exactly what kind of face he’ll make, and he’ll tell you off or laugh you off or both, and that would be alright, if he did.

(When you try to justify mental imagery this romantic to yourself, later, you tell yourself you got it from a book, rather than from the depths of your own heart. It makes you feel a little better, even if you know it isn’t really true.)

You’re a bell. When you were cast, you were made to be whole, to ring a single note that was clear and pure of its own accord. And that’s alright; you could have gone on ringing your one single note for all your life and that would have been fine. But Yosuke is the bell that was cast to perfectly match your tone and your timbre. When the two of you ring together, the sound you make burns so fiercely it brands your soul with the knowing of its harmony. You can never unhear the rises and falls between euphony and dissonance on the sine wave that is your relationship. Take Yosuke away, and you could still ring on your own. You would still be complete.

But you could never forget the sound of the both of you ringing together.

You wonder, a little awed and a little despairingly and feeling a little bit sick, why it is he doesn’t seem to hear it too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Double chapter update! Because they're both tiny. Next chapter we are back to the plot.
> 
> This chapter has a _dramatic reading_ that [IS RIGHT HERE, HOLY SHIT](http://columbiasgreatestminds.tumblr.com/post/149239385016/so-thievishly-gave-me-a-sneak-peek-of-her-really). It's the best. It's my favorite. I am blessed by wonderful friends.
> 
> Guys I am so sunburned. It's been like five days and I wish I did not have skin. The beach was a mistake.


	9. (chill)

_was kanji really that bad?_ you ask him one day, in the biggest fit of idiocy you’ve ever had.

He looks at you. Probably, at least; you’re not sure, because you’re focused on your fishing line, which is cast out into the Samegawa River. You focus hard, and you don’t let out the breath of tension building in your lungs until you can tell through your peripheral vision that he’s stopped staring at you and looked away. For minutes there’s nothing but a cool silence you think might just be the autumn breeze, instead, curling between your bodies and tousling your hair. You resist the urge to hunch deeper into your jacket, because it will do nothing to ward off the chill you feel; that comes from within, not without.

_dunno what you mean._

You twitch your line. The silence drops. The cool turns chill.

_look, it was freaky, okay?! like... what if that shadow’d really gone for one of us? you heard what he said, about boyfriends..._

You don’t speak.

_why’s it such a big deal to you? we saved him, didn’t we? isn’t that what’s important?! he’s accepted himself! and his weird-ass_

_Yosuke._

He’d become animated besides you, sharp gestures and words gaining rough-hewn edges; but at once he goes still as ice in winter, freezing absurdly mid-gesture. He even hovers there, as if reluctant to move for fear of angering you further. You stay still. When he folds in on himself it’s mechanical, like a rusty old machine having its broken joints forced back into place after long disuse. It’s awkward. You’re thankful you don’t witness it directly, because you’re still staring out at the water.

 _... sorry. you’re right. we’ve_ all _got weird-ass things about us, don’t we? i’m no exception. i have no right to be so hard on him. you know, i..._

You finally look at him when he leans forward and wraps his arms around his knees, his eyes pensively narrowed as he watches the glint of sunlight skip off small swells in the river water.

_... i really think i owe kanji an apology. for all the shit i said during the camping trip. that was seriously uncool of me, what i did to him back then. right when he was still feeling his most vulnerable... heh._

You watch his expression twist into something exposed and wry as he turns his eyes towards the sky and you want so badly to kiss him that it makes your heart burn.

_i go and be a huge jerk... he’s a seriously forgiving dude. i’d have decked me, if i was him. he’s a way nicer guy than most people give him credit for... look, man, i guess the whole point of this is just..._

He finally looks at you, and you take care to shut your mouth in a natural way. It had been open, just a little bit.

_at the time, i guess it felt that bad. i didn’t know how to handle it. really got to me, you know? maybe in a way, it still does. but look, i’m not the important one here. he can be whatever and whoever he wants to be. if that’s who he is, that’s all that matters. right?_

It takes you a moment to answer, because your throat is tight, and your chest is weak, and your eyes sting.

 _right,_ you breathe.

_hey, man, you alright?_

_i’m fine, Yosuke._

_hey, why’d you want to know, anyway?_

You start to reel your line in. You’re not getting any bites. It’s time to recast, this time in a new spot.

_i guess it’s just been on my mind._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is not actually chapter 9. This is chapter 10. Chapter 9 refused to work and I don't want to put the fic on hold while I wrestle with it. If I ever do finish it I'll add it as a supplementary separate work or something.
> 
> This is the first real exchange of dialogue in the fic, I think. There will be more. If you've read confrontations, this probably seems familiar, though I actually wrote this exchange first.
> 
> For those of you who missed it, my buddy Gent did [a dramatic reading](http://columbiasgreatestminds.tumblr.com/post/149239385016/so-thievishly-gave-me-a-sneak-peek-of-her-really) of the last chapter that is still _the bee's knees_ and like the greatest thing that's ever happened to me. Please listen and appreciate what cool friends I have.


	10. (icarus)

Ms. Sofue tells you all a story one day. Most people are tuning out her imperious lecturing and posturing, the way she gestures with her weird staff ( _a crook, you remember it’s called_ _–_ _she told you all, once, and insisted you remember_ ), but you’re sitting straight and listening, doing your best to take notes. There’s more than the usual reason for this, aside from your usual desire to do well and take good notes. It’s the specific story she’s telling. For once, it isn’t specifically (or even obliquely) about Egypt. It’s a Greek myth.

When Ms. Sofue, with whip-quickness, calls out into the class seeking an answer, Yosuke is the one she makes stand. You can hear the telltale wobble in his stance betraying sleep-muddled limbs, and before he can start to stutter uncertainties and uhs and ums, you turn your head just enough to murmur:

_icarus._

He repeats the name with the kind of slow to start but quick to finish hollow confidence that betrays his lack of knowledge in the subject, but speaks to his faith in you. You have to clench your jaw in order not to smile.

Once class is over he asks you how you knew that. You pretend to look contemplative before informing him that you learned about it by paying attention. The elbow in your side is worth it, a fluttery rush of butterflies chasing the brief warm burst of pain.

_smartass._

_it was an interesting lesson, Yosuke. it's about a father and son who make wings out of feathers and wax to escape a prison. but icarus flies too high, and the sun melts the wax in his wings, so he falls to his death._

_... yikes. that's cheerful._ yosuke is pulling a face, discomfited and thoughtful at once. _why wasn't he more careful? like, shouldn't he have known what was going to happen?_

_well, that's the moral of the story. daedalus, who invented the wings, warns icarus about flying too high, but icarus ignores him._

_seriously?! who ignores the advice of their genius dad about not risking certain death?_

_it's about the price of hubris._

_hubris..._

_that's_ _–_

_pride, right?_

_yeah, that’s it. it's about being young, too, i think. imagine flying on real wings and being able to do something as incredible as soar like a bird... you'd be tempted too, right?_

_hmm... i see your point. but still, i don't know about that. with stakes that high, i think i’d fly low._

_you've never wanted to be reckless, yosuke?_

_are you saying i should_ want _to be like icarus?_

_no, nothing like that. but he’s understandable, isn't he?_

_... when you put it that way, it's hard to say no._

_personally, i think i understand how he feels._

_whoa, hang on a second. you're not going to fly into the sun or ocean or whatever on me, are you, partner?_

_haha. don't worry, Yosuke. i don't plan to do anything like that._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Do you know what Angelica said / When she read what you’d done? / She said / “You have married an Icarus / He has flown too close to the sun.”_
> 
> Honestly, that song has absolutely no relation to this chapter, but I listened to a LOT of Hamilton while writing this fic. (The track is _Burn_ off the Hamilton soundtrack for those unfamiliar.)


	11. (lullaby)

Sometimes he calls you at midnight when it’s raining, even when there isn’t a Midnight Channel to watch. Maybe because you’re in the thick of a rescue, or because you’re floating in the calm wake of one. These calls have become a habit, maybe a bad one. You can’t decide if it’s a vice or just a comfort the two of you cling to, purchase on survivor’s flotsam in pitch black waters that neither of you could navigate without the other. This alone, this adrift, there is no North Star to guide by. You don’t tell anyone that. These are skies no one has ever had to chart before, after all, and you can only work so many miracles of celestial cartography. You suspect Yosuke knows anyway, and does you the greatest possible favor of letting no one in on your secret: that you’re flying blind, figuring it out as you go, and by God, are you scared.

_ hey, partner! _

The sound of his voice is like a lullaby, a wishing melody to rock yourself to sleep. You cradle your phone between your shoulder and your ear, bustling about your last tasks for the night like laying out your futon and putting away your schoolbooks, and you talk about everything and nothing. There are hidden pits in these conversations, landmines that both of you have learned to skirt around with the deftness of dancers through unspoken treatise. Sometimes he asks you what you’re doing after school each day, and you idly recount your clubs, your jobs, the other friends you hang out with, and if these stories carry with them a charged undercurrent of silence on Yosuke’s end, everything he isn’t saying, everything you know he’s desperately wishing he could ask you about the crush you won’t tell him you have, well, that’s just the way it is.

He knows you won’t give.

You know he won’t ask.

Sometimes the two of you talk shop, lay out plans and tactics and ideas for the TV World. Yosuke is your second-in-command in more than just name and in order of those who gained their Personas; you rely on his sense of tactics, his judgment of the battlefield. He always defers to you, in the end says he hasn’t really got the head for it with a hangdog kind of smile that wrenches your gut sideways every time you see it, but you know that’s not true. He’s got a keen sense for these things, and when he isn’t getting in his own way, he makes an excellent sounding board for your ideas and theories, and his suggestions always prove invaluable to the team formations you later put into real practice.

And if sometimes these discussions veer dangerously close to memory, to thoughts of steam and  _ boyfriends,  _ to why the hell was that on your mind anyway you never explained yourself, goddammit, yet never actually manage to broach the question, well, that’s just the way it is.

You know he won’t ask.

He knows you won’t give.

Your secrets are piling up and beginning to block the doorway to your friendship. You know Yosuke can see it clear as day and that he’s quietly railing against it, shoving back against the mess and silently begging you to open up to him. You can feel the way his eyes burn angry desperation into your back when you’re turned away from him, be it in class or in the TV World or at Junes or simply out with all your other friends. It scalds you, leaves your soul raw and too tender to expose to the whole world, and yet you must, day after day after day, because  _ you must.  _ You’re needed. You have to. Senpai. Leader. Sensei. You have to.

You wish he’d stop. You understand why he’s doing it, you sympathize with why he’s doing it, there are fissures and cracks in the surface of your heart bleeding the understanding of why he’s doing it, but you wish he’d stop. This is getting to be more than you can bear.

Sometimes you think it’s unfair that this is all on you.

Why can’t he see it too?

Why are you all alone?

The secrets stay. The doorway grows more choked, and access through it more impossible, less frequent. You can’t risk unblocking it. More than anything, senpai-leader-sensei can’t let him through to see this. You have to protect him from yourself.

You have to protect him from what you know to be true about your soul and your heart in relation to his.

(you aren't normal

you aren't right)

Sometimes he calls you at midnight when it’s raining, and all you do is let yourself fall onto your futon and let him chatter about the day. The sound of his voice is like a lullaby, a wishing melody to rock yourself to sleep, and fall asleep is what you do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story would be very different from Yosuke's perspective.
> 
> A bit of a preview: the title of the next chapter is _(void)_.


	12. (void)

_come on, leader, bring all your friends back here!_

_you should trust us more._

It begins to end here.

Your head is throbbing. You can feel the same beat, rhythmic and unrelenting, pulsing through your fingers as they’re curled too tightly around the hilt of your sword, making your knuckles turn white. Your whole mind is a furious static haze as you explore this wretched place, the others carefully, cautiously, backing you up.

Yosuke hasn’t told them. You know that. You trust him at least enough to have kept your secrets, _the_ secret that would blow apart the myth that is and has ever been your leadership. But they’re your _friends_ , you’ve spent eight months getting to know them right down to the darkest carved out hollows of their hearts, and no matter how hard you’ve tried to hold them at bay, they’ve gotten to know you a little, too. You’ve done your very best to be an unshakeable force, the bass line, the bedrock, as always, as needed, _because you must_ et. al., and really, objectively, you think you’ve done a good job.

Despite all the short-breath panic in your mind telling you that none of this is alright, that the quiet in the house is unbearable, that thinking Nanako was dead even for that short amount of time smashed you into jagged-edged pieces and even though you put yourself back together you’re still not sure you did it _correctly_ , you still smiled. You smiled for your friends and your classmates and your teachers, you held your shoulders straight, you were focused and attentive and you participated in team discussions to the same level as always. You’ve been present. You’ve led. You were patient and kind and you lost track of the line between what was naturally you and what you were forcing yourself to be for the sake of appearances. You’d really believed your mask was firmly in place.

But Yosuke knew.

You could tell you must have betrayed yourself somehow when he didn’t even send so much as a text and just showed up at the Dojima residence the next night after the hospital confrontation with Namatame with a tray of prepared sushi and two sodas from Junes and announced he was staying over, refusing to take no for an answer despite your faint protests. He even brought his books with him to do homework, he’d told you, because he knew you’d chew him out if he didn’t. When he’d followed it up with a wink, because of course he did, the gesture reassuringly familiar like a pair of old shoes so worn-in you can just slip right into them with no effort at all, you’d felt a little bit like you wanted to cry.

Yosuke had probably known that, too, and didn’t say a word about it. You were speechlessly grateful.

The tendon-snap tension between the two of you hasn’t been resolved, but with circumstances being what they are, there’s something of a silent truce: _catch the killer. then we’ll talk_.

Yet the disappointment in his eyes when he’d found you in Junes that night after you’d broken your promise not to see Adachi alone had a depth to it you didn’t want to let yourself see. Even now you’re still burning with shame, a furnace in your gut eating through fuel too fast, leaving you with buzzing excess energy in your limbs that you can’t do anything with and breathing out the ashes of your discontent with every exhale. Too much idle movement, too much pushing, and the others will know. You’ve had to become a study in exacting self-control to orders of magnitude you would have thought absurd even a few weeks ago.

It’s driving you insane.

And the way your friends hold themselves as they trail you through the streets of Magatsu Inaba tells you that maybe, somehow, they know.

For all your carefuless, for all your prickly precision, for all your senpaileadersensei smiling and straight back and calm, they know.

For reasons you can’t understand in yourself, this infuriates you.

It happens after you hit the second floor. Already irritated with Adachi’s pointless tricks and pointed taunting, when you hear an uncertain _yu-kun?_ from Yukiko, you whirl on her and snap,

_what do you want?_

Everyone stares and no one says anything. Naoto and Yukiko are watching you like they’ve never seen you before, but Yosuke’s expression is flat, his arms folded over his chest.

 _alright_ , he decides, _that’s enough. we’re leaving._

More silence.

 _since when did you give the orders?_ you ask, with icy calm.

_since now. you’re not thinking straight, and it’s gonna put us all at risk. we’re partners, and what that means right now is i’m going to help you do what’s best. we’re getting out of here, and that’s final._

_we’re **staying**._

_are you kidding me?!_ His laugh is derisive and angry, and he gets up in your face. Your jaw flexes, but you manage to keep your expression impassive even as your hands bunch up into tense claws around the hilt of your sword. Out of the corner of your eye, you see Yukiko start forward, try to say something, but Naoto sweeps an arm out to stop her.

_you think you’re in any condition to lead the team right now? you’re just blindly stalking around barely paying any attention to what you’re doing! you’re gonna get us all killed!_

_... i would never–_

_yeah, i know you’d never_ intentionally _. but what happens when you’re too screwed up in your head to notice a shadow ambush and one of us gets hurt, and you’re not ready for it? the thing is i know you’d feel guilty as hell, assuming we even got out of here in one piece. come on, man. let’s just go. we’ll regroup and–_

He stops talking when one of your hands seizes his collar. You didn’t even realize you were moving until you completed the motion. The two of you stare each other down, nearly nose to nose, eyes too wide. There’s no sun here, no wind. Just endless and glaring oppressive red haze and nothing but bile filling your throat as Yosuke lifts his hand to grip your wrist and try to shove you off and

_aww, what’s the matter, leader? can’t take the heat?_

The voice is silken, but it grates across your eardrums like your head’s been cracked open and dragged, oozing, over the asphalt beneath your feet. In the space of a blink the area around you transforms; where there wasn’t a portal a heartbeat ago, there now simply _is_. You and Yosuke go still as death, gaping at the fresh new exit, and you thoughtlessly release him.

_why don’t you run home to momma for a hug and a kiss? oh, that’s right... you can’t, because she dumped you out here alone. she couldn’t give less of a shit about you, could she? hahahahaha, ahhh... life sucks, doesn’t it, kid?_

Adachi stops talking. You can feel eyes on you, singeing your raw skin, but you ignore them, staring up at the sky as if Adachi will simply appear before you and let you mangle him with your bare hands.

_dammit... dammit!_

Without a thought or a backwards glance you stride heedlessly through the portal, ignoring your friends’ cries. To your own surprise, you do end up back in the bedroom, staring at the shocked faces of Kanji, Rise, Chie, and Teddie. You ignore them, too, and head for the door even as you hear three sets of feet stumble into the room after you.

_wait! will you just–_

Everyone’s stunned by what’s happening, how quickly everything’s gone wrong, but Yosuke’s still the fastest. He’s the one that manages to catch your sleeve, and you stop. You look over your shoulder at him, and whatever it is he sees in your expression, it’s enough to make him jerk back and pale, though not let go. A void of silence blooms between you in which you simply look at each other, and you spend it counting and cataloguing the emotions that play across Yosuke’s face. You don’t know what Yosuke does. You don’t know what Yosuke thinks.

You tell him to tell the others the plan.

He asks you what plan.

You wrench your sleeve out of his grip and you walk out of the room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another preview: the next chapter is titled _(confession)_.
> 
> This was one of my favorite chapters to write.


	13. (confession)

Time slows down after the end. Crystallizes, perfect, in your perception. Everything seems slower and softer and somehow gentler. The edge is gone from the sides of your mind; you don't need someone to sand down your jagged thoughts anymore to keep you from busting yourself open on the slightest jutting surface. The change is noticeable to everyone, and you decide that's okay. You're all celebrating the real end of the case, relaxing in the renewed sunshine that you'd started to forget the clarity and fire of. The whole team is smiling more. Laughter comes more easily. Teasing is purely friendly, instead of carrying a razor's edge that could cut and make bleed at any moment. Joking around is just joking, instead of a necessary valve to release pressure, something dangerous that if tampered with could accidentally scald you and leave everyone around sucking on burnt fingers.

You can navigate these seas. No longer are you the eye of the hurricane, the anchor holding fast in the calm and protecting all others from the savage screaming of the storm outside the pocket of your meager protection. You're senpai, you're sensei, but for the first time, you can put down the mantle of _leader_ , because it isn't needed anymore. You're done. You no longer have to chart the stars. These waters are terrestrial now. You're free to settle on the earth, into this familiar ocean of mundanity. It should feel cold and still and sad after the fantastical heights to which you've risen, but you find it anything but. To you, it's warm, and comforting, and familiar. An enveloping embrace you've missed. A normal life. You cherish it like a drowning man would cherish rescue given in the instant before the waves crash over his head and swallow him for good.

It's better. You feel so much better than you have in almost two months of wanting to scrabble off skin stretched too tight over your skull.

At least, that's what you try to tell yourself. You try to tell yourself there's nothing left. You try to tell yourself there isn't still one pair of eyes boring into you, waiting on you. You try to tell yourself there's nothing left that needs clearing. You try to tell yourself you feel nothing else that needs reckoning with. Because there is nothing else that needs reckoning with. Everything is fine.

It's all done, after all.

You have nothing left to say.

Christmas arrives. You try to invite everyone over for a party to celebrate the end of the case, as well as your uncle and Nanako getting a temporary release from the hospital to come home for the holiday, though nothing about it goes exactly the way you’d planned for it to. In the end, it takes quite a few phone calls and apologies on your part (though you’re never quite sure what it is you’re needing to apologize for) to get everyone together, but it’s worth the effort to see all their smiling faces. More than anything, Nanako’s laughter allows every inch of you that’s been taut to breaking for months on end to finally, finally relax, and you spend most of the time glued to her side, a pillar of support should she start to feel tired and a constant source of ready jokes and small magic tricks. She smiles at you, and though you have to swallow around the tightness in your throat that makes your chest want to shudder, you pat her head.

Eyes follow on you, settle on you, not desperate, but pleading. Your skin is not so raw, now, and they are easier to bear. You do not meet them.

There is nothing left to say.

When the room gets too warm, someone opens the shoji, and you settle outside on the engawa with Rise and Kanji and Naoto, the four of you chatting and laughing and listening to the ruckus inside as the others fight over who gets to make dessert. You couldn’t possibly be happier. Naoto excuses herself to try and stop the Yosuke vs. Yukiko and Chie dessert battle before it starts, and Rise quickly joins her. You and Kanji remain, talking earnestly about patterns for his newest project until Nanako calls for him. He’d brought a gift for her; she’s hugging it now, a beautifully crafted gray stuffed cat everyone agrees is somehow reminiscent of you. You laugh at the flush on his face as he stands and makes his way over to her.

You should have known that solitude was dangerous. You shouldn’t have let yourself be alone. You should have realized what was happening the instant you heard the shoji slide shut.

At first you think nothing is amiss, looking up with a smile, but when you see who it is you all but fall off the engawa, stumbling into the snow beyond. In contrast to your scrambling he’s still, tucking his hands into his pockets, and with the glow from the living room illuminating his back, you can’t see his face very well, cast into early evening shadow like it is.

Yosuke.

For a moment the two of you simply stand there, steam-puff breaths filling the air between you. He’s looming on the engawa above you, and all the distance of all the past few months opens up wide and it has teeth and it seems all at once as if it could simply swallow you. You wonder if maybe he’ll decide against whatever he’s come out here to do and just go back inside instead. You’ve done everything to deserve that kind of response and nothing to deserve his mercy or his forgiveness.

Hasn’t driving him away been sort of the point?

You can picture the wife and children he’ll have. They're happy. They're lovely. You don't exist.

You wanted that for him. Normal. Simple. _Not wrong._

Not you.

Then he steps down and takes a few steps to the side, so that the light can strike his face. Now you can see him: all uncertainty and nerves and faintly flushed cheekbones. He won’t look at you now, and his hands lift in order to rub his arms, drift to let restless fingers to toy with the cord of his headphones, rise higher to grip onto the ear pieces as if he needs something to anchor him.

_hey, partner, i ... wanted to talk to you._

You’re not sure what to say to that. Slowly, drawing on earth-deep reserves of resolve and everything you ever learned in drama, you ask him what about with an even voice. He flushes a little deeper, taps his foot so fast his toes stop packing down the snow and instead are just fluttering in the air. Pauses, takes a deep and calming breath before looking you square in the eye.

You know what this is a split millisecond before he says the words, and anesthetic shock stops your heart.

_i like you._

Your mind is cleaved in two. The force of it, a bolt of pure feeling, jolts your heart back into beating double time, and you feel it slam into your ribs, pulse in your temples. You can't control your face. You know your eyes are wide, know you must look shocked and maybe to him it looks horrified and goddammit why can't you summon up the presence of mind to speak

 _... i have for months,_ he tries, clearly unnerved by your silence and the way you're staring. _i just wasn't sure if you...?_

The rise in his voice makes it a question. You want to reach down into your throat and tear out all the gears and clockwork that move your beating heart because none of it feels adequate now to define how you feel.

 _... the thing with kanji?_ He tries again, desperation coloring the edges of his tone. _i've been wondering for months why it bothered you so much, other than you're just a good person and not a total asshole like me._

You're silent. His flush is fading into sheet whiteness and you want to scream.

 _i just thought_ – _the way you look at me? when we’re studying? you're always... staring, and i... i always thought it meant you_ _–_

Your mouth is dry. (He saw you.) You've forgotten how to form words. ( _He noticed._ ) You've forgotten language. Your tongue is heavy and dumb in your mouth, ten tons of betrayal.

 _... man, please, just say something. i_ – _i guess i was way off base? heheh, that's_ – _i mean, we can forget the whole thing! that's_ – _that's fine, i just_ –

He's raking a hand through his hair, looking anywhere but you with eyes widened with growing panic, and you can't fill your lungs with enough air to breathe correctly.

Your soulmate has feelings for you too and this revelation has shattered you so thoroughly you can't even bring yourself to react. All you've done is stare.

The look he gives you then is of such sincere, wrenching pain and fear that you finally make a sound, and the sound is his name. Because you recognize that look as your own face, the face you've seen in the mirror almost every day since you had the realization almost nine months ago and your life turned itself inside out. The quiet agony of resignation to the idea that you've bound your heart to someone who cannot or will not love you back. That face doesn't belong on him. It should never belong on him. You want to stroke your hands across his skin and press the lines in his brow away with your fingertips until he's smiling, smiling, because then he'd know you loved him too

except you

more than love him

and your silence has gone on for too long, your panic-stricken murmur of his name not enough. Yosuke, looking a lot like he wants to throw up and as shamefaced and embarrassed as you've ever seen him, ducks his head and refuses to look at you anymore.

_... i’m gonna ..._

With no more preamble than that, he turns on his heel and deserts you. Though you think, as you watch his hunched back retreat into the house, that you're the one that deserted him, even though you didn't move or say a word more than his name.

Quickly he hops up onto the engawa and pulls the shoji open, leaving it that way. You hear exclamations of surprise and questions in the shape of his name, but Yosuke, it turns out, is an even better actor than you are. It's all that time at Junes, dealing with the public. You can _hear_ his customer service smile when he reassures the others with loud cheerfulness that he’s just fine. You can hear him ask Nanako a question.

He's your soulmate.

He's your soulmate.

He doesn't know he likes

(loves?

what if

oh god)

his own soulmate.

Would he be glad if he knew? Would he just feel overwhelmed?

Or would he be angry at you for keeping it from him for _so long?_

You can hear Teddie ask where sensei is.

It starts to snow just as you let yourself back inside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uh oh.
> 
> Bit of a nod to the Golden anime, here, plus a few other tweaks. Extended notes for this chapter are [here](http://thievishly.tumblr.com/post/150089352964/nodus-tollens-notes-for-chapter-13-whispers).


	14. (support)

The party lingers for another hour after that, but the mood has drastically changed. Yosuke won’t even look at you, and the two of you have gone from laughing, joking, arms-round-each-other’s-shoulders best friends to not so much as being on the same side of the room in what was a matter of minutes. All of your friends sense it right away, and everyone works double time on priority number one: keeping Dojima and Nanako from picking up on anything being amiss. Both of them notice anyway. Dojima watches you, in his usual shrewd, too sharp way, and you keep your eyes on your hands when he does. Nanako watches you _and_ Yosuke, her expression serious to the point of tipping into unhappiness before one of your friends distracts her. You talk to her, too, and so does Yosuke, the two of you keeping up a grand charade of everything being just fine.

You can feel everyone’s eyes on you, and the burning is so much worse than when it was just Yosuke’s. But no one can ask, because you don’t give any of them a chance. You don’t leave the middle of the room for the rest of the party, and neither does Yosuke. The two of you seem to be silently agreed that this party is as much for Nanako as it is for your friends, and you’ll see it out for her sake, but the sudden awkward frigidity in your midst is making you so tense your back muscles are starting to hurt.

Now that your words have come unstuck, you want to pull him aside, to explain, but each time you try to glance in his direction, you find him in loud conversation with one of your increasingly alarmed friends.

It’s not long before Dojima announces that Nanako needs her rest, and everyone goes into wrap-up mode. Yukiko, Chie, and Naoto offer to help you clean, which inspires a spirited _yeah, me too!_ from Kanji. Teddie starts to offer, too, bouncing to his feet, but Yosuke wordlessly grabs him and the two are out the door with a called out

_gotta go! feel better, nanako-chan!_

from Yosuke. You hear Teddie start to loudly protest and ask Yosuke what he thinks he’s doing before the front door shuts.

There’s a slight pause from everyone in the room before your friends resume what they were doing as if nothing has happened. Rise and Kanji busily pick up a conversation they were having with Nanako, tearing her attention away from the loss of Teddie. Your uncle’s very deliberate arched brow goes ignored. You feel sick and swallow hard against the feeling as you go back to picking up plates. Or something. You weren’t really paying attention to what your hands were doing.

Rise, actually, is the one who lingers. Someone was going to, you’d thought distantly, and it doesn’t surprise you that it was her. You saw her dawdling in her cleaning duties, buying time drying dishes much too slowly. Maybe she just remembers what you told her once, about acting. Maybe she just knows, like everyone does, that as much as you’re friends with all of them, Yosuke is your partner, and it’s a little bit different, and for one reason or another, he just stormed out of your house without a backwards glance. Whatever her reason, she doesn’t seem to buy your outward calm, and even after all the others have headed on their separate ways, she stays.

This time when you find yourself out on the engawa, it’s for a very different reason. The two of you are bundled up against the cold, but the biting snap of it nipping at your face keeps you alert. Reminds you what your reality is, now.

_is everything alright with you and yosuke-senpai?_

Her tone is careful, but not timid. You can imagine the look on her face, though you won’t actually look at her, and you think you’d be a little proud of her if you could feel anything over the roaring white noise that’s filling up your chest.

 _... i don’t know,_ you say, surprising yourself as you stare out into the dark, imagining his back as he left. _i don’t think so._

 _huh?_ There’s a lilt of confused laughter to her voice. _but it’s you and yosuke-senpai! i can’t imagine anything the two of you can’t_

You look at her now, and she stops mid-sentence. She’s been gentle in the way she’s been talking to you, more curious than worried, but when you look at her, her face blanks out in shock. Whatever it is she sees in you, it silences her encouragement.

 _oh,_ she breathes. _oh, senpai._

When she reaches for you, you let her.

 _i think you should talk to him,_ is what she eventually says.

 _yeah._ You look away again, curling your hand through hers. _i don’t know where to start._

 _well..._ The way she cants her head catches at the corner of your eye, the motion sort of effortlessly coy. _when you’re telling a story, you want to draw the audience in, right? the best way to do that is with a strong hook. so start from the beginning, senpai._

It’s hard to picture Yosuke as an audience. It’s been a long time since he’s shown that kind of passivity around you. You’re the guy he told to punch him in the face, not some guy with no name who complains to him about the lack of selection in the produce section. Helplessly you smile, and duck your head, and curl your free hand into a fist so tight your nails dig into your palm, and it hurts. Rise watches you. You shake your head, and her fingers press into the back of the hand you’ve got linked with hers.

_what if he doesn’t forgive me?_

_he will._

She sounds so sure.

_you’d forgive him, right?_

You look at her, and your silence seems to satisfy her, because she smiles.

_exactly. you can do it, senpai! i’ll be cheering for you!_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Senpai, have you ever thought that you're pushing yourself too far, or that you were just acting...?"  
> "All the time."
> 
> Sorry for the long delay, jeez! I lost track of time. Updates may continue to be a little sporadic though, I'm sorry. Not too much further till the end.
> 
> It's ambivalent for a reason, and I leave it up to you to decide whether or not Rise realizes the feelings involved are not strictly platonic.


	15. (truth)

_do you seek the truth?_

What have you been doing all this time?

You text Yosuke that night, apologizing, asking him if he’ll speak to you, and after a two hour delay, all you get back in response is

`its cool man`  
`were cool`  
`thx tho`  
`ttyl`

Which is when you know the situation is even worse than you thought. You text him again, and this time he doesn’t even respond. You spend a solid half hour sitting stock still staring at your phone, hoping he might text you back, hoping for anything at all, but nothing comes through. Nothing happens at all, other than the silence of snow and your heartbeat pulsing in your fingers as you very slowly increase your grip on your phone until you finally notice your fingertips have turned white.

You hurt.

Why couldn’t you just say it? Why couldn’t you tell him? Tell him _anything?_ That you like him? That you love him? That he’s your– The wife and children you’d designed for him had only ever been something of your imagining. That had only ever been a roadblock for you. You’d never even considered other possibilities for his objections to dating or being with guys. And you should have. You can’t believe you didn’t. You can hardly breathe around your own disbelief at your shortsightedness, your own unwillingness to see other causes when your own reason for holding back has been so unreal all along.

What have you been thinking all this time?

Why were you so convinced he could never love you?

_i really don’t swing that way!_

_are we gonna be safe with you?_

_now quit it! you’re creeping me out..._

No. You know why.

(not normal

not right)

You snap your phone shut and curl up in bed, despite knowing you won’t sleep.

_if it’s the truth you desire, come and find me..._

The next day, bright and early and with stinging eyes, you push yourself back out of your futon and into whatever clothes you can make yourself reach for. You tuck your glasses into your pocket, and you pray that Yosuke has the day after Christmas off of work. Whether it’s luck or he really isn’t working, you make it to the electronics section without seeing him, or anyone else you know. Without a second’s thought or hesitation, you plunge into the TV once the section is empty.

It should be strange, you think, to find the staging area so calming when you’re utterly alone, without even the fox here for reassurance. Your current katana is off to one side, neatly laid out along with everyone else’s weapons, though none of you will need them now. It just hadn’t seemed worth it to sneak all that back out of the TV and potentially get into trouble when you’d all been so tired, so ready to go home and celebrate. Right now you’re glad of it. There’s plenty of places you can go, plenty you can do. You know there are two specific dungeons that are off-limits. Not just because the Shadows there are strong, and alone, you’d be risking your safety in a very real way.

Right now, you’re just not up to bracing yourself emotionally or psychologically for seeing Heaven or Magatsu Inaba.

Your wandering eventually takes you to the Secret Lab, which, you suppose, is as good a place as any. Double-checking that you have at least two Goho-M’s in your pocket – you’re feeling unhappy and a little reckless, yes, but not suicidal – you tighten your grip on your sword and head in. The layout of this place is familiar to you even without the warm, pleasant hum of Rise’s assurance and guidance like a live wire in the back of your mind. You know generally where you’re going, even though you really don’t actually pay that much attention to the path you carve through the rooms and hallways of dark metal and machinery that drones always somewhere just out of view. What was once a maze is now just a haze to you, nothing you actively acknowledge as you let your feet carry you while your thoughts work.

_if what you seek is the “truth,” then your search will be even harder..._

The only mazes that trap you now are the ones you made out of your own mind. Keeping you inside your head, behind your own eyes, unable to see the perspective of the one person whose perspective was most crucial. You’ve spent so much time tending to others, bending to others, being needed by others, and yet somehow this escaped your notice. That maybe Yosuke was always looking at you, too. That maybe Yosuke noticed when your gaze lingered on him.

That maybe you needed him, needed _someone,_ as badly as everyone in your life has always needed you, and you refused to let yourself acknowledge that because it might have inconvenienced him.

You’re not kind to yourself in your thoughts. As revelation after revelation hits you while you move ever lower through the floors, your thoughts are a pale, grim counterpoint to the color that had flooded back into the world with the disappearance of the fog.

Senpai.

Leader.

Sensei.

This person doesn’t need others.

It’s not a thought you normally ever let yourself dwell on, but it swarms and buzzes in your thinking now. You were so often alone. Do this, take care of that, make sure the house is tidy, we’ll be back at 9, please put yourself to bed. Please make sure the door is locked. Take care.

We love you.

_everyone sees what they want to..._

They needed you to care for yourself, so you did. When you’d nick your finger on a knife or fall down and scrape your knee or would simply wake up after a scary dream and needed them, they weren’t there. Because they weren’t home. Because they were never home.

You were raised not to need others. Your parents weren’t there to allow you to need them.

They loved you. You know this. You don’t ever let yourself forget it, making it into a pillar in your mind that kept you from crumbling when you wanted to cry because your knee hurt or you wanted to scream into the silence just for the sake of something _different._ But you never did anything that could be construed as disobedient. As you grew up, you kept the house tidy, and you earned top grades in school, and you were obedient and kind and polite and smart and proper and everything they could have ever wished for you to be, and in the rare times they were home, in the rare times they were a family, you could have drowned yourself in the shallow pool that was their attention. Your mother’s kiss, your father’s hand on your head, their proud(? right? weren’t they?) smiles, these were the gentle rains that kept the barest hints of green flowering in the vast, untended desert that was you.

You didn’t hate them. You don’t hate them. How could you hate two people who love you so much, that they sacrifice their time and their lives to work so hard to provide you with the best life?

What you should be is grateful. So you are.

Your sword rips the last Shadow of this group to pieces as you finally pause, coming back to yourself to find you’ve descended three floors in the lab. Staring around, you allow your weapon to lower until the tip touches the floor, the quiet ringing click of metal touching metal seeming to echo through the now-empty space of the room you’ve stopped in. You’re alone.

You are alone.

Because you chose to be.

You were alone then because you didn’t know how _not_ to be.

No one had ever taught you before how not to be alone. You went to school each day, and you were surrounded by classmates and teachers, and you watched them smile and laugh at one another, and never did the same unless one of them actually looked at you.

Barely anyone ever looked at you unless they needed you. And they needed you when you took good notes. They needed you when you joined sports teams and played passingly well. They needed you as you got older and got so used to watching instead of participating that you began noticing all kinds of things most people didn’t seem to see. Things they’d worry over or be frustrated by, and when you’d offer your observations with a word of advice–

–they’d look at you, and they’d smile. Rains, gentle rains, temporarily dispelling the scorching heat inside you that you otherwise didn’t know how to get rid of.

It wasn’t a life you were contented with or a life you were resigned to. It just ... was.

The real truth of what a life was _supposed_ to be – not just an existence, a _life_ – only started to come to you when you stepped into a warm house on a quiet lane – when you stepped into a classroom full of eyes that sought you out just because they were happy to see you were there.

When a boy with a smile like sunshine called you _partner_ and didn’t need anything from you except for you to be _you._

Your chest heaves with exertion, and again you realize you moved on without thinking about it. You’re now on the fifth floor, and your hands are starting to shake you’re so tired. How long have you even been here? You can’t remember. These aren’t difficult Shadows for your level of skill anymore, but this is the first time you’ve fought alone since–

And the sheer volume of enemies that you’re fighting is slowly but surely eating through your reserves. If you don’t stop soon, this could turn ugly, and no one even knows you’re here to come get you.

Gingerly, you lower yourself to sit halfway down the stairs to the next floor.

_you're special to me, you know?_

_and the fog only deepens..._

Even now thinking about the words threatens to blow your mind wide open, and you can’t focus too much on your memories of the way his voice sounded and the way his face looked when he said them to you. It _hurts._ It hurt then, a bright sharp sting that you could barely breathe around, but it hurts so much more right now. Leaning over, you brace your forehead on the heel of your palm and try to shove down the memory and the feelings that come with it. They sit heavily now in your chest, a clunky brick of dead space that threatens to choke you. Before it felt like so much, and now it feels like an overwhelming amount of _nothing._

There is no one to blame for all this pain but you.

He bared his truth to you, and what have you been doing for all these months except pursuing and exposing the truth? What did you all just risk your lives for, base the fate of humanity on? You yourself believe this: humanity prefers reality as it really is, no matter the cost or strife. _You_ prefer reality, no matter how ugly or full of pain. And you know you couldn’t live with yourself if you walked away from this, all of this, tangled up in your lies and half truths, having led Yosuke to believe you were spurning his feelings, his very _friendship_ ... all just to protect him.

_time will show the path humanity takes..._

He’d probably be mad at you if he knew that was what you were doing. You let your body lean against the wall and laugh weakly at nothing.

One last time you think: if you let him believe the lie, he could have the future you’d thought of for him. He could live without knowing he had a boy for a soulmate.

The ache in your limbs and lungs is like fire. Your everything hurts. Your muscles, your head, your heart. But the physical pain has done what it tends to do, and what you intended it to do: it has cleared your mind and focused you.

If you continue on like this, you’ll lose him as surely as he’ll lose you. Whether or not he rejects you, on this path, the both of you will lose your best friend. And you can’t let that happen. Not when you’ve staked so much on facing the truth and acknowledging the world for what it is.

_children of the new potential..._

You never did face your Shadow. You think maybe this – all of this – was your own unique way of doing that.

You push yourself unsteadily to your feet and reach into your pocket for a Goho-M, and you think, as the light envelops you,

_alright. let’s go._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the long, long delay in getting this chapter up. It will be smooth sailing from here.
> 
> Extended notes for this chapter are now [here](http://thievishly.tumblr.com/post/151416191714/notes-for-nodus-tollens-chapter-15more-man-so).


	16. (speak)

Finding him is much harder than you’d thought it would be, but also, in a way, just about exactly as hard as you’d imagined.

He’s not in any of the usual spots. You don’t find him by lounging by the Samegawa with his bike in a heap nearby, and he manages to evaporate from the classrooms and hallways of Yasogami before you can get within two feet of him once class time is over. You think about finding him at Junes during one of his shifts, and realize how unfair that would be. As much as you want to talk to him, as badly as you want to set this right, cornering him in a situation he couldn’t escape from due to the obligations of work smacks of wrongness. You do try to find him once his shifts are done (information furnished through no asking of your own by Teddie, whose help you accept somewhat guiltily), but the disappearing acts continue. The only way he’ll be around you now is if there’s a buffer of your other friends, so that nothing of importance can be said, and even then, he won’t meet your eyes.

You hate yourself a little for knowing you’re getting just a taste of what you’ve been doing to him for months, and even this you can’t stand.

You miss him.

After a week’s worth of fruitless attempts at getting Yosuke to speak to you again, you set off wandering under a bruised, dusky sky. Even having spent New Year’s Day giving everyone your greetings and receiving warm wishes in return, you still feel hollowed out by the knowledge that try as you might, you won’t find Yosuke. You _have_ been texting him, and you’re staring at your phone now, scrolling through the stilted responses, pale imitations of Yosuke’s normal banter and cheer. You can tell he doesn’t want to shut you out completely, he just wishes you’d leave him alone so he can get over his heartbreak in peace.

But you can’t. You’ve made up your mind. The time for lies is over.

Aimless feet and preoccupied thoughts take you drifting close to the train station. It’s quiet here, held in the stillness created by a lack of the usual travelers that would be coming and going this time of day. They’re all with their families, celebrating. You should be, too. When your brain catches up with your feet and you register where you are, you pause to scrub your face with both hands before turning to leave

and realizing all at once that you can hear music.

Maybe it was only a matter of time. Just a process of elimination. Maybe subconsciously you’d intended to come here all along. You had checked everywhere. Everywhere but here, seeing as it was hardly a hangout spot. But in the end, there are only so many places in Inaba one can hide. Moving now as surely as if someone has set hooks into your spirit and pulled, you keep going until you can see the steps.

_Yosuke._

His electric guitar is in his lap. The sounds the strings make are faint and faintly tinny without an amp, but you can still make out the chords he’s strumming as he moves his head, headphones secure over his ears as he nods in time to a song. Probably the same one he’s playing. It isn’t what you’d expect out of his taste in music, but at the same time it’s exactly what you’d imagine he’d be listening to right now. It’s got a contemplative and sweet sound to it, thoughtful and heartaching, and something about it tugs on your lungs, making your breath stutter.

You stop a few feet short of him with your hands tucked into your pockets and decide not to say anything. Eventually, the song ends, the strains of his guitar tapering off into the winter quiet of the evening. That’s when he looks up. The only sound now is the gasp he cuts off.

 _please,_ you start, controlling your face but not the way the shape of your eyes shift, _Yosuke._

His mouth hangs open as he stares at you, small pieces of his body shifting, something you can see only because you’re watching him for the impulse to run. To your immense relief, he sighs heavily through his nose and starts to nod, though your relief shifts into uneasiness when he stands.

 _not here,_ he says, his tone clipped and devoid of inflection. You stay silent, jaw flexing as you watch him return his guitar to its case and slip his headphones off into their usual position around his neck. Once he swings the case onto one shoulder and starts to walk, you fall in silently and obediently beside him. Your procession down the road is slow and formal and stiff. He won’t look at you, gaze set stubbornly on his feet anytime you sneak a glance at him.

 _where are we going?_ you finally find the courage to ask.

 _someplace private_ is his terse answer.

His burning desire for you to keep on shutting up is telegraphed by every robotic movement of his body. On another person, or even just another day, this would read like anger. But you know it isn't.

It’s pain, wearing a costume mask, all dressed up as a more superficially acceptable set of emotions so as to be presentable in public. Presentable to you.

So you keep on shutting up.

“Someplace private” turns out to be the gazebo. It takes a while to get there and you don't dare reach for your phone to check the time. You don’t think, at this point, that Dojima will mistrust your actions or your lateness as anything suspicious, but your mind can't help flashing to Yosuke’s parents, to Teddie, wondering if he explained himself to them, wondering if they even know he’s alright, if he even has his phone.

Are you genuinely worried or searching for ways to mentally delay the inevitable?

You know you aren't. You know your worry is real. That was an awful thing to think of yourself. Despite knowing that, you can't help searching for more, more ways to tear yourself down for being this level of failure. Weak for giving in and not protecting Yosuke. Weak for being a coward and hiding from him for so long.

Weak.

While you chase yourself in circles in your mind, Yosuke is swearing under his breath and clearing what little snow there is off the bench, his guitar on the floor leaning against it. The wind had blown some in here, but it's mercifully mostly clear.

Yosuke sits, and so do you, but then he immediately stands back up in a restless fit, raking his hands roughly through his hair with a hiss and facing away from you. You stare at his back, imagining the sharp points of his shoulder blades beneath his winter jacket, and then slowly draw yourself back to your feet.

With an immense sigh, Yosuke turns to face you. He’s got his arms folded over his chest in their usual position, but his posture is so tense it seems the slightest added tension could make him rubber-band snap.

 _alright,_ he manages. _what did you want to talk about? look, if it's to say you're sorry, i_ –

Whatever self-deprecation he was about to cut himself open with, you stop him by interrupting.

_there's something you need to know._

_what?_ His tone is bare, carefully held between his teeth to keep it from the dangers of inflection. You know that won't be true in a moment. You know you're about to turn his world upside down the way he upended yours all those months ago, only you'll be doing it on purpose. You pity him, and you hate yourself, and you'll never understand how, you'll never understand why, it came to this.

There's no point in drawing it out.

You owe him this.

(even though this feels more like something you're _doing_ to him, you're selfish, not right, how could)

It's time.

 _you’re my soulmate,_ you murmur with zero preamble, your voice barely there.

For a moment there is only the voiceless sigh of falling snow.

 _... i_ – _what_ – He chokes, pauses, regroups, tries again, _what the hell?_

Now he’s staring at you like you’ve gone insane, which you have. You say nothing. He heard you.

 _... is this some kind of sick joke_ – _?!_

In contrast to your quiet, his voice is braying in its furious volume, the sound rolling away like a shockwave.

_because i’m not laughing, dude! this isn’t funny! i know you have a weird sense of humor, but this isn’t the time for_

He stops abruptly once he refocuses on the look on your face. Horror and realization creep up on him slowly, and both make you want to throw up. You briefly entertain actually doing it, because you feel like you could right now, and with months of acting practice under your belt you could probably pull it off with extra drama. Maybe it would be enough to distract the both of you from what’s happening right now: the biggest mistake you’ve ever made in your life.

But still, you owe him this. The _truth_ is, you were only ever protecting yourself.

You decide to say that part out loud.

 _what?_ he whispers.

_i thought for months i was protecting you. i didn’t want you to live with the reality of what i knew about us._

Yosuke lifts a hand to cover his mouth, his eyes flared wide as he takes a step back.

_but, to be honest, i ... was scared. scared of rejection, and scared of myself. in the end, i thought i could deal with it on my own, but i was wrong. all i did was hurt you._

His brow knits tight and low over his eyes, bunched together so hard it looks like he might cry.

_if you can’t forgive me, Yosuke, i understand. but you deserved to know the truth. we’re soulmates._

He shakes his head.

_i had the realization_

_stop_

_that day in the midnight channel_

**_stop_ **

_when i took your hand._

**stop!** _dude just, just stop, please, i can’t keep listening to this._

He’s shut his eyes and bowed his head, and his shoulders are shaking. Without thinking you reach out to touch him and he flinches away from you, his eyes shooting wide again as he stares at you wildly like you’re a ghost from his past, risen to taunt and terrify him. You swallow as if that will help fill the pit that’s opened up in your gut. It does nothing.

The void of silence returns. If it felt gaping before, a gash in your friendship weeping memories and sentiment and any sense of anything ever being okay between you again, now it feels like an impenetrable wall. It feels like your lies. It feels like his disgust. It feels like your shared sin of months upon months of refusing to give in and express what you actually felt, instead wearing masks of stoicism and rejection to hide your terror.

Can this much damage be repaired?

Yosuke sets his shoulders, and his hands are balled into fists at his side. You can see the fury rising in him, and all you feel is tired. You want to put down your weapons. You’ve been holding up your shield for so long you've gone numb from the effort, and now it's finally slipped from your fingers. When he seizes your collar and yanks you close, you let him, not trying to resist.

 _you’ve known for_ – _for how long, and now you tell me? i was starting to think you didn't even like me_ at all! _why didn’t you say anything?!_

The world _normal_ hovers on your tongue tasting of acid and bile and in trying to spit it out you say,

_why do you think?!_

Your voice bursts out of you in a way you hadn’t intended, ringing with your hurt and your sudden boiled over frustration, and the way the anger on his face withers into horror tells you you’ve hit home. Much harder than you meant to. You instantly regret it, lifting your hands to grasp his before he can drop them from your collar.

 _Yosuke... i’m sorry, that wasn’t_ –

_no._

For the first time since the party you feel like you're seeing the real Yosuke before you. Unguarded and shaken but hearing you. _Listening_.

 _dude, no. i deserved that._ His jaw is hard and set even though his eyes are overbright, and you might be dying your heart hurts so badly.

_thinking about it, i gave you every reason to hide the truth from me. i probably made you feel like a freak._

His voice is hard too, and laced with venom that’s aimed only at himself.

 _... that’s ... not_ –

 _don’t. don’t protect me. i can take it. we’re_ partners. _we gotta be equal._

_Yosuke._

You step into him because there's nowhere else for you to go, not realizing you’re trembling until he shocks you by smoothing a hand down your back to stop it. Your forehead is on his shoulder and he’s warm and real and right there.

 _i’ve been such a dick,_ he sighs, and his voice sounds like it’s pointed at the sky, _for such a long time._

 _at first i just didn’t know how to deal with it,_ you mumble into his jacket, loose, loose like you’re falling apart and you need someone to tug the thread that will pull your limbs back into some semblance of order. _i’d just met you. i wanted to get to know you first._

_... and then i went and made an ass out of myself, so you decided to keep quiet. got it._

Despite yourself, despite everything, you laugh, and he huffs into your ear.

“Hey,” he says, and the clarity of his voice rings through you in a way it maybe never has before.

What is the definition of a dialogue but really talking and actually letting someone else hear you?

“No,” you reply, lifting your hands and knotting them in his jacket at the same time you lift your head and stare down into his eyes. The way they reflect the light makes you think of honey and amber and precious stones, and you feel foolish the way you always feel foolish around him.

“This isn’t all your fault. I ... some part of me was trying to push you away. I thought you’d be happier without me.”

You pause, your rickety emotions threatening to tip you back into nausea where you’ve so often been lately, and for a wild second you hope Yosuke will fill your silence. For once, he doesn’t. He’s just watching you searchingly, and you see the flash of fear that moves across him at the words _happier without me_. It makes you realize he wants you to keep talking. So you do.

“I ... I knew that if I didn’t say anything, you’d never find out who your soulmate was, and someday, you’d get to move on. You’d have a wife and children...”

“That’s bullshit,” he declares, his voice flat and sharp-edged. “I mean, not the concept, I don’t know what I think about that kind of future, we’re still in high school! Just, why the hell were you trying to decide that kind of thing for me?!”

You’re quiet, and some of the anger in his expression ebbs.

“... because you thought I’d never want to be with a guy, huh.”

You’re quiet. He is, too.

“See what I mean, about me being an ass?”

“That wasn’t the point,” you immediately reiterate, dogged. “I’m just saying, you can’t put all the blame on yourself. I hid the truth from you for months.”

“Yeah, because I was making you!”

“Are we really fighting about this?”

“Only because you’re making it an issue! Just let me own up!”

“I’m the one who should be owning up, Yosuke!”

In retrospect, you’re not even sure who threw the first punch. All you’re really sure of is that you two went from clutching at each other’s clothes to scuffling to trading blows, and then you’ve got a fist in your mouth, tasting of the stale tang of skin and nine months of frustration and pain, words unspoken and words said wrongly, chances missed and chances bravely, terrifyingly, taken. Of course, your knuckles are digging into his cheek, too.

It ends as quick as it started. You knock each other back near simultaneously and he falls away with a pained groan that turns into a chuckle, you with a huff that has no particular intonation but that Yosuke will know for the almost-laugh that it is. Punch drunk, the both of you wheel to the ground just at the edge of the gazebo steps and stay there, leaning on each other to keep from flopping over onto your backs (or falling painfully down the stairs). Yosuke rests his head against yours, his hair tickling your chin, and your heart slams into the roof. Hardly daring to breathe, knowing the shiver in your lungs is making your fingertips tremble, you tip your head against his, too. Yosuke doesn't move, except to get more comfortable.

You could burst apart into dust right now, simply combust, from force of feeling or simply reeling too hard to regain control, but you'd still die knowing this moment had been real.

“We really messed this up,” he hums, after a breathing silence that gives you just enough time to stitch your composure back together. Idly, you wonder if this is affecting him as much as it's affecting you. You can't see his face. When he holds out his hand out with painstaking shyness, you can see his fingers are trembling, too. Knowing you're not alone in this storm steadies you.

Then again, hasn't Yosuke always been at the eye of the storm with you? You just weren't ready to see how completely that was true.

Threading your fingers through his, you hold onto his hand tightly, anchoring you both to the Earth. To each other.

“No kidding. I think I need a do-over.”

“A what now?” he asks, though the laughing incredulity in his tone makes it clear he heard you and just doesn’t know what to make of it.

“Yeah. Of your confession.” You feel him adjust his shoulders accordingly with the sudden tonal shift of the conversation. “I just ... I was stunned. I’d been in love with you all this time, and I knew you were my soulmate, but to hear you had feelings for me... I didn’t know what to do. I’m sorry for hurting you like that.”

Yosuke is quiet, trying not to look at you, though you can feel him glance down at your intertwined hands.

“Thanks,” he says simply after a solid minute of silence, and you feel so relieved he accepted your apology that you slump a little. His warm, solid back is there to hold you up.

“But don’t worry about it. We’ve both been making some pretty dumb mistakes all year. Can we just call it even instead of fighting over who’s the bigger jerk?”

You laugh, feeling lighter and freer than you have in nine months.

“Okay. Even.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're almost at the end. One more chapter and an epilogue. Thanks for going on this wild ride with me, everybody.
> 
> I said at some point that all the choices with the dialogue were deliberate. That matters most in this chapter. And that's all I'll say about it.
> 
> By the way, the song Yosuke was listening to/playing was [Far Away](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UHBkWrzZ-Q) by Nickelback. Because of course it was. You have no idea how often I listened to that song on repeat while writing this scene. I've suffered for my art, people.


	17. (future)

The snowfall is gentle and cold on your hair, pricking at your cheeks and tickling your eyelashes. Each time you blink new snowflakes tumble off onto your skin, and you have to fight not to smile too wide for fear of cracking your chapped lips. You’ve been biting and worrying at them a lot these days, though a quiet thought in the back of your mind says, with some wry humor and a flash of embarrassed heat, that you’ll have somewhere else to focus that energy now.

It’s dark and there’s no one but the two of you out in this kind of weather. Even so, if you could have fallen out of your own skin in shock, you would have the moment Yosuke was the one to take initiative and grasp your hand as you walk down the road. Then again, you’ve been the one holding back all this time. When you return his grip it’s probably a little too tightly, like he might disappear if you don’t hold on hard enough. That he doesn’t seem to mind is one more reason to understand why he, of all people, is yours.

Not the person that belongs to you. Just the person that matches you, perfectly, beat for beat, in tone and timbre.

"So what happens now?"

You look at him, at the peace in his expression and the fall of his hair and the line of his jaw. You want to touch it with your mouth. The knowledge that you’ll maybe get to, _actually_ get to, lets you finally stop wondering about it.

"What happens now is I leave Inaba in about three months."

He looks at you, as if trying to measure and weigh the statement for the pain he thinks you might be trying to hide, but there's none to find. You're smiling. He starts, too.

"Yeah, well, so what? We're soulmates, right?"

He holds up your linked hands, grinning like a puppy, glowing like a star, buoying you up all helium-heady laughter and unknown yet perfect for the unknowing futures.

"Whatever happens, that's ... that's always gonna be true. So we'll figure it out, right?"

"It's only a year," you say with a smile that slightly hoods your eyes, maybe deliberately now letting affection beam through your expression. You've got nine months' worth of making up to do in the space of three, after all.

"We can coordinate what schools we apply to. In no time at all we'll be back in the same city again."

"The city, huh..."

There's a nostalgia to him as he says it, a fond wistfulness in the way he casts his smile over the dark of the Inaba fields you’re walking besides, that reminds you just how much he's grown and changed as a person since the day you met. It's the kind of look that settles into your heart and reminds it of its reasons for beating.

"We'll still visit," you add, in the sort of tone that suggests you hadn't been done with your thought, and of course this is how things are going to be. "I love Inaba too, after all."

"Yeah?"

Yosuke is glancing at you from the corner of his bright eyes, fighting to keep his expression in check, but it's a battle he's losing with each passing second. You actually laugh, and he stops you both walking with an indignant noise and a _hey, what're you laughing at–_

But you step closer to him then, and he shuts up with more alacrity than you’ve ever seen from him in your life. There’s an edge of nervousness to him, too, the same nervousness you’re feeling, and you both hover there, staring at each other in the soft light between the halos of two street lamps.

“Yeah,” you answer witlessly, staring at his lips with your heartbeat pounding hard in your throat. This should be easy, you think, like a movie, like you ever thought about doing something like this if you ever gave it thought at all, but it’s like all your joints have gummed up with the sticky tack of your emotions. This is your soulmate. Yosuke, Yosuke Hanamura, your _soulmate_ , looking at you like he just might love you too, keeping his hand in yours, waiting for you to do _something_ other than stand here, yet all you can do is think about what what you _would_ do while being so utterly arrested by the sheer impossibility of what’s happening that you’re not actually doing anything.

Yosuke seems to want to, though. He’s starting to fidget, reaching the crossroads between agitated and embarrassed, and you manage to relocate your vocal chords the same time he boils over.

“Yosuke, can I–”

“Dude, will you just–”

Before you can say or do a thing, he darts into your space. He presses into you too hard when he does it and practically smashes his nose into your cheekbone and he huffs out hard against your skin like he was holding his breath for a plunge. But his lips are almost meltingly soft on your cheek, uncertain shapes and a word he tries and abandons speaking, and for a second after he’s done you can still feel him there too close, breathing, lips fluttering, his whole body a solid bunched line of tension, before he sighs again and lets himself take one step away.

The both of you are pink and wind chapped and too warm, and you’re pretty sure you know he’s feeling the same way because his face looks like you’re sure yours does. You’re still at a loss for words, your throat strangled by pure feeling. The best you manage is a choked sound, something closer to a wet croak than actual language, and that’s all it takes. The pressure valve releases, and you start to laugh again, hiccuping and gasping, impossibly lightheaded.

Yosuke doesn’t ask you what’s so funny this time. He just starts to laugh too, the sound of it as delirious and relieved as yours, and for a minute or two it’s all you can do. Laugh and laugh your way through the first moments of healing over.

“I love you,” you tell him, straightforward and unashamed. Yosuke goggles at you. You can actually hear his teeth click when he snaps his mouth shut.

“Dumbass,” he whispers, ducking his chin and shaking his head out like a dog before abruptly throwing an arm across your shoulders. Instinctively, you wrap your arm around him, too.

His arm is a comfortable weight, securely pinning you to the memory of what just happened, reassuring you that moment was – this moment is – real.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the end. The epilogue goes up tomorrow. I'll do all my gushing there. Thanks so much guys!


	18. epilogue

A few days later finds you both in your room, curled up under a blanket on your couch. Your legs tangle easily with his and his side pressed against yours is at once a comfort and a thrill. Teddie has been banished to the living room despite loud protests of wanting to hang out with the two of you. You claimed you weren’t feeling that well, which is actually true. You’ve got video game controllers in your hands and an afternoon of nothing to look forward to when a sound effect in the game reminds you of something. You tap the pause button, tilting your head thoughtfully as you lower your controller and look at Yosuke.

Your boyfriend looks back at you in curious surprise, shifting to sit up slightly.

“What’s up, partner?”

With a corner of your mouth twitching slightly, you ask if you ever told him about the bells, knowing you haven’t.

“Bells? Uh ... no? Am I supposed to have any idea what you’re talking about? Because I don’t.”

So you take his hand oh so gently in yours and you tell him, unable bite back a smile as you watch his expression transform from confusion into shock into embarrassed disbelief.

“Man,” he groans, drawing the word out while twisting his expression into a look of disgust, but the smile that tips up the corners of his mouth ruins it. So do his pink cheeks. You’re grinning now, grinning so hard it’s making your face hurt, and you don’t care, you don’t care about anything you’re so happy.

“Only you would – I can’t believe – that was so – !”

“Yeah?” you ask, sunnily.

“Just shut up,” he mutters with a roll of his eyes, but you know him well enough to know he’s secretly pleased by the metaphor. You’re soulmates, after all.

Yosuke pulls you in for an indignant kiss that doesn’t manage to chastise you at all,

and for the first time in ageless, endless months,

you feel normal,

you feel right,

you feel like you’re not senpai or leader or sensei but simply someone who is not alone, _ someone who is loved, _

and you feel like everything finally makes sense.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're wondering what he means by the bells, allow me to [refresh your memory](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7558300/chapters/17778313). (I thought about putting that link in the chapter itself, but didn't want to break the flow of reading.)
> 
> Oh boy. I can't believe this project has been eight and a half months in the making and completing. I have so much to say I hardly know where to begin! I can't thank all of you, my faithful readers, enough for going on this journey with me. This was all for you guys and I'm so glad this fic has been so well-received. It means the world to me as a writer and a person.
> 
> I want to thank [neonsign](http://archiveofourown.org/users/neonsign) and [Angevon](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Angevon) for their constant encouragement and inspiration over the course of this fic. I couldn't've done it without the two of you.
> 
> A big thanks of course to all of my beta readers, particularly [dashery](http://archiveofourown.org/users/dashery) and [gentyjack](http://archiveofourown.org/users/gentyjack).
> 
> And of course a huge shoutout to my best buds and my squad, my twin and my yosuke, for their encouragement and friendship. Yosuke in this fic was very strongly influenced by the way [manicExpressive](http://archiveofourown.org/users/manicExpressive) writes him and I'm so grateful.
> 
> I'm not too sure what I'm going to do next. Might be a few shorter things, might just launch directly into another really long work that I've already gotten started. Feel free to tell me things you might like to see from me. Otherwise, see you all next time!
> 
> As always, feel free to say hello to me on my [tumblr](http://thievishly.tumblr.com/). Additionally, expanded notes for this chapter (as if this wasn't long enough) are now [here](http://thievishly.tumblr.com/post/151964101789/nodus-tollens-chapter-18-epilogue-notes-and).


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